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TN Ready and End of Course test scores in determining final grades
CRIPPS PATRICK
CRIPPS

A policy for weighting TN Ready and End of Course test scores in determining final grades of DeKalb County students has been suspended this year due to the continued disruptive Covid-19 pandemic The DeKalb County Board of Education made the move during its regular monthly meeting Thursday night.

Weighting is a mathematical calculation used to give more importance to certain assessments when determining an overall score. The DeKalb County Board of Education made the move during its regular monthly meeting Thursday night.

Weighting is a mathematical calculation used to give more importance to certain assessments when determining an overall score. In DeKalb County, the policy is to weight students’ TN Ready and End of Course test scores by 15% in grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 in calculating final grades. That portion of the testing policy is being suspended just for this year.

State lawmakers approved legislation this year designed to hold teachers, schools and districts harmless for standardized testing results from the 2020-21 school year and included a provision to allow districts to decide how much this year’s test scores should weigh in on a student’s final grade.

“Due to Covid we had discussed possibly changing the percentage of the weighted scores for TN Ready and End of Course testing. What they (Tennessee School Boards Association) recommended is if we did any changes to suspend lines 3-7 of our (Weighting policy). We did a survey among the staff in our system and the majority voted in that survey to suspend the testing value for this year for the TN Ready and End of Course,” said Director of Schools Patrick Cripps.

Due to DCHS Graduation on Friday, May 14, the Board of Education voted to have the next regular monthly meeting a week earlier on May 6 at 7 p.m. at the Ernest Ray Education Center instead of May 13.

At the beginning of the meeting Thursday night the Board of Education observed a moment of silence for 18 year old Cassie Maxwell, a DCHS senior who died in a car crash Monday; retired teacher Ann Puckett who passed away last week; and Freda Johnson, a school bus aide who died in March.